Humanitarian crisis worsening in IoK: FM

Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday said that humanitarian crisis was deepening owing to inhuman curfew and lock-down in occupied Kashmir.
Talking to a delegation of Council for Human Rights and Religious Freedom led by Lord Duncan in Islamabad, FM Qureshi said that Kashmiris were languishing under military lock-down for the past 106 days.
He apprised the delegation that life paralyzed and people were facing severe shortage of essential commodities owing to inhuman curfew in the held valley. FM Qureshi said that that patients were dying in hospitals due to unavailability of medicines.
The foreign minister said that Narendra Modi-led Indian government imposed communication blackout in occupied Kashmir to conceal facts from the world.
He urged the international community and human rights organizations to play their due role to help resolve the decades-old Kashmir dispute. Speaking on the occasion, Lord Duncan assured the foreign minister that they would raise their voice against human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.
Earlier in the day, in view of the ongoing military lockdown and communications blackout, occupied Jammu and Kashmir continued to remain cut off from the rest of the world on 106th consecutive day on Monday.
There was a shortage of food and medicines, while heavy snowfall had multiplied the miseries of the hapless Kashmiri people.
Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Law and Justice Barrister Farogh Naseem here on Monday called on Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad.